Agenda and minutes

RESOLVED that the minutes of the meeting held on 22 November 2012 are correctly recorded subject to the inclusion of Mr Cockburn in the list of officers in attendance and that they be signed by the Chairman as a correct record.

1)       Mr Gough and Mr Whittle introduced a report which set out the background to the business planning process for 2013/14.  The new process placed the emphasis on reducing the burden of business planning with a lighter touch process. It was important to increase the consistency and synergy between business planning and both the performance management dashboards and directorate and divisional risk registers which underpinned the business plan actions, and were reported to the Committee on a regular basis .  The draft plans were still at an early stage of development, with further refinement over the coming months before approval in March 2013.

(2)       Members were invited to consider the risk register and the following individual draft business plans.

Risk Register

(3)       Mr Gough and Mr Scrivener noted comments and answered questions from Members which included the following:

• In response to a question on how frequently business units/divisions considered their risks, Mr Scrivener stated that officers from his team seek progress updates quarterly as a minimum, and that he regularly attends Directorate Management Team and Corporate Management Team meetings to discuss.  The frequency of monitoring would depend on the nature of the risk.
• Mr Gough explained that risks could manifest themselves in a number of ways and that once a risk was identified, mitigating actions would be set up and reviewed on a regular basis. Mr Scrivener confirmed that all divisions had their own risk register which identified the actions necessary to mitigate the risk
• Regarding the contingency plans for risks to the organisation, Mr Scrivener explained that within divisional business plans critical functions were identified and resources required outlined.    Organisational resilience was an important issue that features on the Corporate Risk Register and he assured Members that there were contingency plans for key areas such as ICT.

Human Resources (HR)

(4)       Ms Beer noted comments and answered questions from Members which included the following:

• In response to a question on why there was no start date for the HR work for the Troubled Families programme, Ms Beer stated that HR’s role with reference to this programme was to make sure that County Council staff and staff in partner organisations had the right skills to deliver the programme.  The start date was to be advised once the workforce development and terms & conditions issues became clearer.  HR would have a reactive role regarding what was needed to deliver the programme.
• Regarding HR’s role with the East Kent Partnership (EKP), Ms Beer explained that HR provided a payroll service to the three District Councils within the EKP.  There was a Service Level Agreement in place which set out clear deliverables under the delegation. In relation to Kent Teach, Ms Beer stated the work of HR with Kent Teach was a success and it was a realistic hope to generate income from this for schools outside Kent.  HR were keen to offer services to other Local Authorities across the country in order to provide an alternative to the private sector in areas  ...  view the full minutes text for item 70.

(1)       Mr Gough and Mr Cockburn introduced a report which outlined the approach to be taken for the next year, in relation to benchmarking services provided by Business Strategy and Support.

(2)       Mr Gough, Mr Fitzgerald and Mr Hallet noted comments and answered questions from Members which included the following:

• In relation to the confidentiality of information supplied by other local authorities, Mr Fitzgerald stated that it was likely that   results of the benchmarking might be anonymised in the first instance.
• Mr Fitzgerald confirmed that due to different local authority structures, it was difficult to always compare like for like, but the advantage of working with a small group of local authorities was that they could devote more time to understand the organisational differences and hopefully make more valid comparisons as a result.
• A Member questioned why we were only looking for local government comparators.  Mr Gough stated that in other areas of work, for example terms and conditions of employment, officers did look outside of the public sector for comparators.

 (3)       RESOLVED that the approach being taken for the benchmarking of Central Support services provided by Business Strategy and Support and the comments made by Members be noted.

(1)       Ms Hansen introduced an update on the second quarter’s full budget monitoring report for 2012/13 which had been reported to Cabinet on 3 December 2012. 

(2)       It was confirmed that since April 2012 officers’ payslips were available online and paper copies were not issued.  The move to Members inputting expenses online and having online payslips was mentioned.

(3)       RESOLVED that the revenue and capital forecast variances from budget for 2012/13 for the Finance and Business Support, Business Strategy Performance and Health Reform, Democracy and Partnerships and Environment, Highways Waste Portfolios based on the second quarter’s full monitoring to Cabinet and the subsequent exception report, be noted.

(1)       Mr Simmonds introduced a report which explained that due to the late announcement of the Local Government Finance arrangements for 2013/14 the final draft budget was not available in time for inclusion in this report.  Mr Simmonds stated that the net effect of the funding arrangements for 2013/14 was a shortfall of £16m above the sum that the County Council went out to consultation on, the County Council’s proposals in response to this would be published on 16 January 2013. 

(2)       Mr Shipton provided a verbal update on the settlement which had produced a £16m greater reduction in funding than for the County Council that consulted upon in September/October.  However, the Council Tax base was higher than anticipated therefore overall the reduction to the County Council was £15m more than had been anticipated in the draft proposals.  He pointed out that this was still a provisional figure, as there were still one or two more grants to be announced including the funding for Public Health and no date had been set for this announcement.  Prior to the settlement being announced the County Council had required £60m in savings to balance its budget, it now required £85m of savings which was a 7 – 8% reduction.  The draft budget would be published on 16 January 2013 to include the latest financial position available.  Mr Simmonds stated the draft proposals in the consultation had been subject to Equality Assessment and he was mindful that any adjustments to be made to take account of the £16m reduction should not impact on the Equality Assessment already carried out.

(3)       Members discussed the budget consultation process and the balance to be struck between a quick and simple consultation on the budget which might attract more responses but be of limited value and the two MORI run workshops of people representative of the population of Kent which provided detailed qualitative data from people who, as a result of this process were better informed.  It was accepted that it had been right to go out to consultation in September, earlier than in previous years. Mr Shipton confirmed that the 2 MORI run workshops had cost £14,000; the majority of this cost was the expenses paid by MORI to those that attended. MORI provided an assurance that the groups were representative of the overall population of Kent.   In previous years the County Council had tried to run similar sessions themselves, they did not offer a fee and had not attracted a broad cross section of the Community.

(4)       A Member referred to the Local Government Information Units (LGIU) published description of the spending power for Kent as being – 1.9% of net spend, Mr Shipton explained that this was based on governments estimate of notional spending power not real spending power e.g. adjustment for spending on academies, the simple pro-rata reduction did not reflect the County Council’s actual spend.  The County Council’s position was closer to - 4% of net spend.     

(5)       RESOLVED that: (a) the  ...  view the full minutes text for item 73.

1)       Mr Gough and Mr Hallett introduced a report which provided an update on the first phase of the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) programme and highlighted the scope of phase two.  ERP was a KCC wide programme that was changing the way KCC did business and as such it affected all KCC staff and Members. The majority of the development was in Oracle, with the aim of maximising the return on the significant investment that KCC had made in Oracle products over the past decade.  The simplification of the standard business processes and tools had already supported savings in Finance and HR and would enable further savings and efficiencies to be delivered.

(2)       Mr Gough and Mr Hallet noted comments and answered questions from Members which included the following:

• In response to a question on what had been done to limit the number of incorrect payslips, Mr Gough stated that the proportion of incorrect payments had been compared with other Local Authorities and comparable organisations.  The County Council was not a poor performer,  and that  there would always be a small number of errors. Officers were looking at a clear and quick way of recovering any overpayments of salary.
• It was agreed that members of the Committee would be supplied with information about the recommendations from the LEAN-type review of the HR service including any recommendations that had not been implemented with the reasons.

(3)       RESOLVED that the progress to date on the phase 2 work streams for the Enterprise Resource Planning Programme and the comments made by Members be noted.

(1)       Mr Gough and Mr Cockburn and Mr Hallett introduced a report which informed the Committee of Kent County Council’s response to the Department for Communities and Local Government consultation on improving Local Government transparency.  The response highlighted the County Council ' s  general approach to transparency within Local Government.

(2)       Mr Gough, Mr Hallett and Ms Spore noted comments and answered questions from Members which included the following:

• Members discussed the issues around the County Council deciding  which information it wished to publish compared to being legally required to publish specific information.  There was the question of how the County Council knew what information the public would find valuable.  It was important that this was demand led locally drawing on sources such as Freedom of Information requests.  
• Regarding  the  KCC website and the amount of information published on it, Mr Hallet explained that there was an Open Data Working Group which were considering how information could be published in a more efficient format
• A view was expressed that it was not satisfactory to suggest that the County Council did not provide information on property transactions as this information was available to the public via the Land Registry.  It was pointed out that the public would not know to search on a specific property unless they knew that it had been sold and also there was a cost to obtain information from the Land Registry. Ms Spore confirmed that it would be possible to provide high level information once a  property had been sold. 

(3)       RESOLVED that the County Council’s response to the Department of Communities and Local Government and comment made by Members on the general approach to future transparency in Kent County Council be noted.   

(1)       The Chairman welcomed Mr Malot  (Syndicat Mixte Niverlan - France  (Interreg Lead Partner)), Ms Leppinen and Ms Koskela (Suupohja Economic Development Agency – Finland) to the meeting. 

(2)       Mr Gough and Ms Harrison introduced a report on the BDUK project where the County Council was working in partnership with the Government’s Broadband Agency, Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK), to deliver a major project to transform Kent and Medway’s rural broadband infrastructure.  The aim of the project was to bring broadband to every property in Kent and Medway which would ensure that most will be able to access superfast broadband.  Without this project many rural businesses and communities would continue to have either no or very slow broadband services as there were no market-led plans to upgrade infrastructure in many rural parts of the County.  The County Council was investing over £10 million to enable this upgrade, which had been matched by £9.87 million from the Government.  It was expected that the network operator that won the right to build the network would contribute the remaining funding required for the project.   The report set out the progress to date, the procurement approach and timetable including the timescales for implementation.

(3)       Members welcomed this report and acknowledged the importance of this project for the residents and businesses in Kent.

(4)       RESOLVED that the report be noted

RESOLVED that under Section 100A of the Local Government Act 1972 the public be excluded from the meeting for the following business on the grounds that it involves the likely disclosure of exempt information as defined in paragraph 3 of Part 1 of Schedule 12A of the Act.

(Mr Malot (Syndicat Mixte Niverlan - France (Interreg Lead Partner))

 Ms Leppinen and Ms Koskela (Suupohja Economic Development Agency – Finland) were invited to remain in the meeting during the consideration of this item)

(1)       Mr Gough and Ms Harrison introduced a report on the decisions relating to the BDUK project.  

(2)       RESOLVED that the Committee endorse the proposed decision to be taken by Cabinet to grant delegated authority to the Head of Paid Service and the Cabinet Member for Business Strategy, Performance and Health Reform to:

a)   enter into a contract to deliver the Kent and Medway BDUK project;

b)   enter into a grant agreement with BDUK to draw down the

      £9.87 million of Government funding.

(Mr Malot, Ms Leppinen and Ms Koskela withdrew from the meeting following consideration of this item)

(1)       Ms Spore introduced a report for noting on decision 12/01882 which had been taken without pre-consideration at a meeting of this Cabinet Committee.

(2)       RESOLVED that decision no 123/01882  (Proposed sale of site known as Former Hereson School, Ramsgate Road, Broadstairs, Kent) taken in  accordance with the process in Appendix 4 Part 7 paragraph 7.18 be noted